lighting me on fire
A notebook with a green cover like a pool table held accounts of trying and failing to spend less money. It landed on the coals with a sigh, and a hundred pages of angst and sadness went up in flames.
Emotional
from childhood
I was 3 the first time I left home. I’d woken up early to a silent house. Mom was at work. Dad was asleep somewhere after a late shift. I was functionally alone, and I began to pack my things.
new eyes
I wonder if modern kids subsist on the same diet of extreme excitement and crushing boredom that I did. The teetering balance of anticipation to actual happening was never more lopsided than on the first day of a new school year. Eager new outfits and first-day jitters landed with a chalk-dusted thud against a inevitable …
